Saturday, 10 March 2012

Despite meeting a couple of decidedly strange characters last episode, there are more important matters at hand as Nisemonogatari's tenth episode kicks off. By important matters I do, of course, mean that Shinobu is craving some doughnuts.

Of course, one can't keep a lady waiting when she's keen to get to a doughnut sale, but before setting out Koyomi engages in a conversation with Tsukihi, who ponders the future of the Fire Sisters and whether it's really something that she can continue with given her half-hearted feelings towards the concept of "justice" compared to her sister and the fact that she really only embarked upon the whole crusade to go along with Karen in the first place. Just as he's about to leave however, Koyomi notices something rather odd - a missing scar on Tsukihi's body that was never expected to heal. Just one of those things, or a sign towards something more sinister?

Any such worries go out the window once Araragi and Shinobu reach Mister Donut, with a wonderful selection of sweet and sugary on snacks to tempt our diminutive vampire. As they both share their haul of cut-price goodies, this sweetness soon turns sour with the realisation that none other than Kaiki also availing himself of the goods on offer. Irritating though this might be, it also offers Koyomi a perfect opportunity to find out a little more about those aforementioned strangers, Yodzuru Kagenui and Yotsugi Ononoki. As you may have suspected, this duo are very much in a similar vein to Oshino as roaming "ghost busters", albeit with a specialisation in dealing with immortal beings. Koyomi immediately assumes this to mean that himself and Shinobu are their targets, but in fact this couldn't be further from the truth, although their actual target proves to be far closer to home than our protagonist could have imagined...

After taking a turn for the needlessly perverted yet again early in the episode, this week's Nisemonogatari quietened down somewhat, entering a groove of unspectacular, slow but sure building up to a surprisingly intense climax that almost made what came before worthwhile. I say "almost" as it feels like it took us an unnecessarily long time to reach this point, but hopefully we're going to step up a couple of years for the show's finale to at least assuage the memory of some of this series' less pertinent moments.